This book is a little difficult to grasp in toto, even at a brisk 164 pages, so permit me to work backwards. The final two pages point out that the Christian gospels contain a great deal of the carnivalesque: "Jesus and his plebian comrades do no work, are accused of drunkenness and gluttony, roam footloose and propertyless on the margins of the conventional social order, and like the free spirits of carnival take no thought for tomorrow." Naturally, that followed an elaboration on carnivalesque comedy as defined by literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin, "a way of combining humour as critique with humour as utopia." Which followed a discussion of the Trevor Griffiths play "Comedians," wherein characters clash over the purpose and point—the philosophy, if you will—of stand-up comedy. All this, in a chapter titled "The Politics of Humour". So, yes, we've established that the book is rather discursive—the prior chapter begins by surveying the history of comic attitudes in society ("Cheerfulness and congeniality usurp a surly Puritanism") and ends with a lengthy definition of wit. Before that, the superiority, incongruity, and relief theories of humor get similarly torn apart and so we end at the beginning, with a winding definition of what laughter is. So it's not necessarily philosophical, it's not necessarily a historical survey, it's not necessarily anthropological or sociological, and it's not necessarily a critique of literature, yet it's all those things. Is it useful though? I guess, in its own disorienting, pointillist way. Though you could easily end the book feeling that it says so much it doesn't really say anything at all, if that makes any sense. Three stars.